The NIST simulation didn't include the curtain walls because they didn't contribute to the gravity load bearing. However, since they were steel box frames holding granite panels set 2 feet out from the columns, they did have considerable lateral rigidity, which was necessary to resist considerable wind loading. Without those walls in the simulation, there's no reason to expect the visual appearance of the exterior columns collapsing to look like the videos. Whatever caused the interior to collapse, which clearly happened well before the shell collapsed, those curtain walls held the building's exterior shape. But that is irrelevant to the purpose and the conclusion of the analysis. You're confounding FEA with CGI.
In the full videos, the east penthouse is seen to collapse at the same time that several windows on those column lines are seen to be broken. Six seconds later, a wave of broken windows sweeps over north face from east to west and then the west penthouse is seen to sink into the roof, with the east end going first. Then a V-shaped kink develops in the visible roofline, near where the east penthouse collapsed. Then the entire exterior wall is seen to descend for seven feet at less then freefall. Then we see the 2.25 seconds of freefall. All of that, including the freefall, are in accordance with the NIST "probable cause" hypothesis of column 79 triggering global collapse -- which is precisely why they deemed it the "probable cause." On the other hand, disingenuous "truthers" like to claim that the freefall came "right at the beginning" of the collapse, ignoring everything that happened before. The rather obvious reason for that distortion of reality is that controlled demolitions theories cannot explain all of that without special pleading -- a "just so" story where the imaginary perps planned all of that, using unspecified methods and for some unspecified reason.
You keep using that word "sophistry." I do not think it means what you think it means.
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